Lady Liberty

Commission year: 
2008
Grant recipient: 
Master Singers

Lexington, MA

In honor of the group's 40th anniversary.

From a preview in the Ann Arbor Observer: "... a resolute choral march setting a poem by Bolcom’s longtime collaborator Arnold Weinstein, with Mahler’s harmonic irony, Gershwin’s melodic sentimentality, and Ives’s cranky individuality fused into Bolcom’s singular postmodernist personality. Lady Liberty opens with a low dirge sung over almost jaunty piano accompaniment, flows into a more lyrical central section peaking with a hymn to “Lovely Lady Liberty,” then returns to the opening dirge for two impassioned climaxes leading to a long, lingering coda and a final, ecstatic cadence."

CANE role: 
Composer: 
Premiere date: 
Saturday, May 9, 2009